
Book _ 



PRESENTED I IV 




COMPLIMENTS OF 

»saac N . phillips 

BLOOM1.VCTON, , U . ' 



Abraham Lincoln 



A SHORT STUDY 
OF A GREAT MAN 
AND HIS WORK. 



By 



ISAAC N. PHILLIPS 



SECOND EDITION. 



I901: 
Bloomington, Illinois. 



.8 



Copyright, 1901, by Isaac N. Phillips. 



tZ J * 






sr- 



"Let us have faith that right makes 
might, and in that faith let us, to the end, 
dare to do our duty as we understand it." 

— Lincoln^ Speech at Cooper Institute, Netv York. 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 



WHEN Abraham Lincoln, after having- been 
named for President, was questioned by a 
campaign biographer as to his early life, he very 
pathetically said the whole story might be told in a 
single line of Gray's Elegy: "The short and simple 
annals of the poor." All the world now knows that 
the man who spoke thus modestly of himself was 
born in the State of Kentucky on the 12th day of 
February, 1809. His cradle, if he ever had one, stood 
upon the dirt floor of a rude log hut; above it was a 
clap-board roof; about it was that kind of supersti- 
tion which an isolated people, full of rude elemental 
force, always manifest, and that kind of poverty 
which, in a new and wild country, casts no shadow 
of degradation, for it is not the absence of goods 
but the invidious and blighting contrast of condi- 
tions which constitutes real poverty. This boy, too, 
was surrounded by people profoundly ignorant of 
the world and of the ways of men, and almost as 
profoundly ignorant of all bookish learning. It is 
certain that the humblest child in the country might 
now, within the limits of a single year, obtain a far 



better schooling" than was accessible to Lincoln dur- 
ing" all the years of his minority. His surrounding's 
from birth to manhood remained practically un- 
changed, and although his roving father made in 
that time something more than the number of re- 
moves which Poor Richard deemed equal to one fire, 
there is no evidence that in the first twenty-one years 
of his life Abraham Lincoln met with any personal 
example or fell under any social influence which 
would ordinarily be expected to quicken his mind, 
arouse his hope or inspire his ambition. 

Th» rise of one of the greatest statesmen of his- 
tory from an environment apparently so luckless 
naturally awakens intense interest and even enthu- 
siasm. But the phenomenon is less wonderful than 
it seems. Had Lincoln arisen from out the slums of 
a great city, or even from the social opulence and 
pampered ease of a palace at Newport, to the intel- 
lectual and moral plane where the assassin's bullet 
found him, the case would be more truly wonderful 
than it is. Though of obscure parentage, Abraham 
Lincoln was no mongrel. In spite of the industrious 
muck-rakes of shameless so-called biographers, it 
is now known that, both through his father and his 
mother, this boy received rich strains of honest Eng- 
lish blood, — blood which had been strengthened and 
sweetened on its course through the veins of genera- 
tions of sturdy American pioneers. He lived with 

6 



nature and learned of her. He toiled, but his toil 
was never hopeless and degrading". His feet were 
upon the earth, but the stars, shining in perennial 
beauty, were ever above him to inspire contempla- 
tion. He heard the song of the thrush and the carol 
of the lark. He watched the sun in its course. He 
knew the dim paths of the forest, and his soul was 
awed by the power of the storm. Out of the heart 
of nature's solitudes he drew the primal elements of 
high success, namely, a good heart, a clear head and 
a strong body; and these factors, under the stimulat- 
ing influence of free institutions, at length wrought 
in the rude backwoodsman a wonderful, personal 
transfiguration, the successive stages of which my 
plan does not permit me to trace. At the day of his 
death Lincoln's reputation had already filled the 
world, and the intense popular affection for his mem- 
ory, which still constantly grows although its sub- 
ject has been for more than a third of a century in 
his tomb, may be regarded as the sure sign of one 
of those transcendant fames such as popular favor 
confers scarcely once in a century. 

As a politician Abraham Lincoln was in breadth 
and sincerity the superior, and in shrewdness and 
success the full equal, of Thomas Jefferson; yet he 
was much more than a politician. No man of his 
age wrote better English than he; yet it is not as a 
rhetorician that Americans revere him. His keen- 



ness of humor and aptness of anecdote were never 
surpassed by any public man; yet history sternly 
refuses to regard Abraham Lincoln as a jester. He 
was a patriot high and true; but in his day many 
others were also patriots, giving - even life to the 
cause. He was a statesman of prodigious breadth 
and grasp, fearless, imperturbable, self-reliant, and 
when he judged principle to be at stake, absolutely 
immovable; yet even the high term "statesman" does 
not express quite the full measure of Lincoln or of 
Lincoln's fame. To all these elements he united 
a personality the most striking, the most singular 
and the most original which is met with in history, 
and beneath it all lay the unfathomable mystery of 
a human soul. In the depths of that rugged and 
pathetic face were the signs of a spirit that in its 
highest moments communed with itself and walked 
alone. In the language of Wordsworth, "His soul 
was like a star, and dwelt apart." 

Public life has its illusions and fame has its 
counterfeits. The relative importance of contem- 
porary historic characters, like the relative height 
and size of adjacent mountains, is not fully known 
until the whole group is seen from a distance. The 
vain and noisy little man of each period "struts and 
frets his hour upon the stage" with such a deal of 
pomposity and show that he appears to his undis- 
criminating contemporaries quite as important as 

8 



the real makers of history. Like the mother frog 
in the fable, he tries with breath alone to puff him- 
self up to a colossal stature, and not unfrequently, 
like the frog", collapses in the process. 

True greatness is the consecration of either great 
talents or great character to the service of mankind. 
When we read the story of a truly great life we learn 
of high purposes pursued by effective methods; we 
learn of a lofty devotion to truth, of supreme faith 
in the right, of heroic self-sacrifice; in short, we 
learn of a supreme struggle of genius in the service 
of mankind. Then, too, a great cause is necessary 
to a great public career. Mere feats of intellectual 
agility send no man's name to the Pantheon. There 
may, for aught I know, be "mute, inglorious Miltons" 
in this world, but being mute they are not of much 
consequence. During several years Lincoln filled 
the public eye. He had a cause, and directly in pro- 
portion to the greatness of that cause his career was 
great. That cause measures Lincoln 's public career, 
but it does not completely measure Lincoln. After 
the voluminous biographies have all been read; after 
the garrulous "old settler," who never so much as 
suspected the greatness of the man in his lifetime, 
has related his apochryphal "recollections" and told 
his mythical anecdotes, always exaggerating his 
own familiar relations with Lincoln, we feel there 
is a Lincoln still unrevealed who is now rapidly 

9 



fading away. But his work is known and lives, and 
that we shall now briefly study. 

It is necessary that in an appreciative study of 
Lincoln we take a comprehensive view of his work. 
We must note that which had preceded him as well 
as that which immediately surrounded him. I must 
ask you to bear with me, therefore, while I go back a 
little to find the historic background of our picture. 

There was in the last century a "Critical Period" 
of American history, which Mr. Fiske places be- 
tween the surrender of Cornwallis and the adoption 
of the Federal constitution. This period was "criti- 
cal" for the reason that in that time it was painfully 
uncertain wether a permanent union could ever be 
formed of the American States. The upheaval of 
the revolution had unsettled the conservative force 
of the American mind, and more follies than would 
have re-filled Pandora's box a hundred times had 
broken out in all the American colonies, — follies 
which in their consequences threatened to become 
even worse than "taxation without representation." 
Revolutions are not well adapted to the training of 
statesmen. A very good revolutionary patriot may 
be only a destructionist, and destructionists are al- 
ways plenty and cheap. The hand that wrote the 
Declaration of Independence was not the hand to 
frame the Federal constitution. Samuel Adams knew 
far better how to knock down King George than how 

10 



to set up George Washing-ton, first President of a 
great nation. Patrick Henry could shout in a tempest 
of eloquence, "Give me liberty or give me death!" 
but he was scarcely less eloquent in resisting the 
formation of the Federal Union; while James Mon- 
roe, the reputed author of the "Monroe Doctrine," 
was very sure the adoption of the Federal consti- 
tution would endanger, if not entirely destroy, the 
people's liberties. 

In this critical period two conflicting theories of 
government contended for mastery in the American 
colonies. One side, led by Washington, Hamilton, 
Franklin, Madison, Jay, Marshall, and their co- 
workers, realized the supreme importance of a strong 
central authority— a firm union of the States under 
one stable government. With the true national in- 
stinct they appealed earnestly to the patriotism and 
good sense of their fellow-citizens. By bitter experi- 
ence they knew the evils of a many-headed confed- 
eracy of weak and discordant States, which, if not 
fused together, they believed would waste all their 
energies in jealous bickerings with each other, pre- 
senting to the nations of the world no broad frontage 
of sovereignty and power. They knew a weak gov- 
ernment would produce confusion at home and breed 
contempt abroad, and, worse than all, would con- 
stantly invite foreign alliance and intervention, to 
the final destruction of that independence which had 

11 



been purchased with so much treasure and blood. 
The old Federalists garnered and preserved the 
fruits of the American revolution. They believed 
that so long" as a government is of the people and by 
the people it will not cease to be also for the people. 
The outcry of that day against "consolidated gov- 
ernment," with which ambitious demagogues were 
frightening the ignorant, did not alarm the old Fed- 
eralists, who were the true friends of the people and 
the real republicans of their day. 

Such was the character of the party which bore 
us through the critical period of our early history, 
leaving us as a legacy the Federal Union, which 
Lincoln, with the help of the Union army, saved. 
Opposed to the Federalists, however, was another 
party of political philosophers, who, in their dread 
of centralization, opposed the adoption of the Fed- 
eral constitution. In the days of war they had been 
good destroyers, but they were not equally good as 
builders. The wrongs they had suffered under King 
George not unnaturally led them to distrust all 
forms of government, hence centralization meant to 
them only a renewal of despotism. They thought 
the people's only safeguard lay in the weakness of 
the central government That was an age in which 
the infection of "red republicanism" was abroad in 
the world. Rousseau had dreamed intoxicating and 
contagious dreams. Voltaire had philosophized and 

12 



sneered. The mad re-action against power long 
abused had come, and in France already the chasm 
was opening to engulf the monstrosities of ages. 
Alexander Hamilton's wise saying that "the vigor of 
government is essential to the security of liberty," 
was then, as a consequence, far less appreciated 
than it is to-day. 

In 1788, however, the country was prostrate and 
the tottering old Confederation was powerless to 
give relief. Riot, repudiation and anarchy were in 
the very air. As a choice of evils the people at last, 
with many misgivings, accepted of ttmlfclnion. But 
it was power grudgingly given, and repented by 
many of the rampant revolutionists of that day 
almost as quickly as bestowed. 

The heresy of 1787, that the best government is 
the weakest government, and that whatever govern- 
ment we have should be distrusted by the people 
and hampered as much as possible in its action in 
order to insure the liberty of the individual, sur- 
vived in the form of "State sovereignty" to produce 
infinite mischief during full three-quarters of a 
century of our subsequent history. Attempts were 
made, after the constitution was adopted, to prac- 
tically nullify it by what was called "strict construc- 
tion." The theory was held that each State of the 
Union had the right to judge for itself what powers 
were conferred by the constitution upon the national 

13 



government. Such was,Un effect, the doctrine of 
the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions, and it was 
a doctrine sincerely advocated in that day by many 
men who were really attached to the cause of civil 
liberty but who seemed not to know the means by 
which, alone, liberty can be insured.* 

Later, the motives of the foes of nationality 
changed. The slavery question rose, and strict con- 
struction and State rights, at first largely specula- 
tive political doctrines, became the pretext for the 
slave power's frantic effort to fortify and intrench 
slavery. Accordingly, in 1861 the old slavocracy of 
the South, after long threats, resolved to trample 
down the government of George Washington and the 
grand old Federalists and upon its ruins to erect a 
slave confederacy. And then it was that the Union 
army, called into being by Abraham Lincoln and 
acting under his sagacious policy, met and slew to- 
gether the dragons, slavery and State sovereignty. 

*Thomas Jefferson lived and died in the belief that each 
State of the Union was a sovereign nation, and that these 
several nations had, by adopting the constitution, formed a 
compact,— a sort of treaty, — which each of the States had a 
right to construe for itself, there being no common judicial 
power over them. On April 8, 1826, — less than three months 
before he died,— Jefferson wrote a letter, being the last but 
four of those preserved in his works, in which letter he said: 
"I think with you, also, that the constitution of the United 
States is a compact of independent nations, subject to the 
rules acknowledged in similar cases, as well that of amend- 
ment provided within itself, as, in case of abuse, the justly 
dreaded but unavoidable ultimo ratio gentium." Jefferson's 
Works, (Putnam's) vol. 10, p. 385. 

14 



In the fierce arbitrament of war and through the 
terrific adjudication of force and blood the Federal 
constitution at length received its final and authori- 
tative construction. 

I thus recapitulate facts well known merely to 
show that in the constitutional development of the 
nation Abraham Lincoln stands in line of direct suc- 
cession from those great constructive statesmen who 
formed and set in operation the government of the 
United States. He finished their great work. In the 
highest sense he was himself a constructive states- 
man. He was a conservative; a savior — not a de- 
stroyer. He stands pre-eminently for law and order, 
for the conservation of popular institutions, for hu- 
man rights secured and enforced by a supreme, mu- 
nicipal law. Back of Lincoln we see, among many 
others, Washington, Madison, Franklin, Gouverneur 
Morris, John Jay, and that other colossus of Ameri- 
can statesmanship, Alexander Hamilton. 

But between these men and Lincoln were many 
others conspicuous for great services rendered to 
the same great cause. John Marshall, of Virginia, 
statesman and judge, who for thirty-four years, as 
head of the Federal judiciary, read "between the 
lines" of the constitution and found there the "im- 
plied powers" by the exercise of which Lincoln was 
at length able to save the Union; Andrew Jackson, 
who laid low beneath the mandate of his imperious 

15 



will the first outbreak against national sovereignty, 
arousing by his appeal to the people of South Caro- 
lina a national enthusiasm which had not yet spent 
itself when Lincoln delivered his first inaugural; 
Henry Clay, the greatest of parliamentary leaders, 
who applied his rare powers to the healing expedi- 
ent of compromise, thus relieving the strain until 
the cement of the Union had time to set; Daniel 
Webster, the invincible defender of the constitution, 
who in debate combined the strength of Goliath and 
the skill of David, overwhelming the enemies of the 
Union with torrents of logic and eloquence; Thomas 
H. Benton, the sturdy and truculent old patriot, him- 
self representing a slave State, whose every heart 
throb was true to the nation he served, — all these 
great nationalists, and many others equally devoted 
though perhaps less conspicuous, had consecrated 
themselves to the maintenance of the union of the 
States. But to Abraham Lincoln among them all 
it was given to act and suffer in the fierce heat and 
light of terrific and final conflict. From the cross 
of national redemption whereon he agonized was at 
length borne away forever the great sin of disunion, 
which like a malignant spirit had so long rent our 
fair land. 

But Lincoln's statesmanship embraced more than 
a mere constitutional doctrine. The destruction of 
the Union as a political end, without an ulterior ob- 

16 



ject, would in 1861 have been sheer madness, how- 
ever doubtful the policy of its original formation 
might have seemed to some of the colonists. In 1860 
the nation had demonstrated its right to live, and 
but for the slave interest the doctrine of State sov- 
ereignty would have died with the generation that 
wrote and adopted the Virginia and Kentucky Reso- 
lutions. It was because the Union had proved less 
subservient to the slave interest than was desired, 
that the South, by a convenient application of this 
decaying political doctrine, sought to disrupt the 
Union and set up a distinctive slave confederacy. 
The constitutional question and the slavery question 
were thus thrown together into the crucible of war, 
The republicans in 1860 had no purpose to abol- 
ish slavery, nor was it the then avowed principles 
of that party which slaveholders feared. Far more 
ominous than the platform of any political party 
was the moral sentiment of the civilized world which 
the South saw everywhere rising against her favor- 
ite institution. The fact that Uncle Tom's Cabin 
found millions of eager readers, both in Europe and 
America, was to southern statesmen far more dis- 
quieting than any party declaration. Adverse public 
opinion — that universal solvent of modern democ- 
racy — threatened to dissolve the very rock upon 
which the industrial and social institutions of the 
South had been built. The high falsetto which a 

17 



few abolitionists were singing - would have excited 
only contempt in the South but for the contagion 
which, in spite of all northern assurances, was known 
to be in that cry. The South knew abolition fire was 
falling upon tinder, not only all over the North but 
all over the world; and, morals aside, there was 
real wisdom in the plan of forming a new govern- 
ment of which slavery should be the corner stone. 
An institution like slavery must be the corner stone 
or nothing. 

Lincoln was not less opposed to slavery on moral 
grounds than an}' man in the nation, but when he de- 
clared he had no constitutional power, and therefore 
no purpose, to interfere with slavery in the southern 
States he was perfectly conscientious. When the 
war came on Lincoln ceased to speak of slavery and 
spoke only of the Union. He always seized upon 
the largest fact. He knew, if the old abolitionists 
did not, that national preservation was the real 
stake in that contest. As chief executive he rightly 
disclaimed jurisdiction over slavery in time of peace, 
but I think he never doubted his right, as com- 
mander in chief of the army and navy, to save the 
Union by any means fitting and necessary to accom- 
plish that end — even to the destruction of slavery by 
an executive proclamation. The idea seemed to grow 
upon him through the early months of 1862, and by 
midsummer of that year his course was determined. 

18 



Starting - out only to preserve the Union, Lincoln, 
by force of circumstances and through the inexora- 
ble logic of events, became the liberator of a race. 
He was the most modest of men, and distinctly dis- 
claimed any personal credit for emancipation. He 
wrote in April, 1864: "I claim not to have controlled 
events, but confess plainly that events have con- 
trolled me." This was honest and it was true, for 
in the stress of war, events, under a popular gov- 
ernment, must to a large extent control everybody. 
Further discussing in the same letter the credit for 
emancipation he reverently said, "God alone can 
claim it." 

Exactly one month before the preliminary proc- 
lamation was issued Lincoln had written to Horace 
Greeley these ever-memorable words: "If there be 
those who would not save the Union unless they 
could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree 
with them. If there be those who would not save 
the Union unless they, could at the same time de- 
stroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My para- 
mount object is to save the Union, and not either to 
save or destroy slavery." It argues nothing against 
Lincoln's sincerity that when he wrote these words 
the draft of the great proclamation was lying in his 
desk awaiting only a Union victory to precede its 
issuance, in order that it might not seem to be a 
mere desperate expedient. Indeed, the student of 

19 



Lincoln's writing's cannot fail to see that at least 

as early as March, 1862, — fully five months before 

h,e wrote this letter to Greeley, — Lincoln had come 

to the conclusion that the war must in the end be 

given a turn that would destroy slavery, — not merely 

to gratify his personal wish in the matter, much as 

he hated slavery, but because of the inexorable logic 

of events.* Lincoln was not an idealist. He was 

not one of those moral egotists who are wont to set 

their own scruples of conscience above statutes. 

By nature a conservative, he would not resort to 

revolutionary measures under guise of law. He was 

the highest example of a constitutional ruler. When 

the hour came that emancipation might fairly be 

judged a military necessity, and when the public 

opinion of the loyal States was ready to accept it 

as such, then, and not before, Lincoln meant to 

strike slavery down. The time at length came, and 

Lincoln struck the blow which has resounded many 

times round the word; and thus what seems one of 

the most radical measures of American history in 

fact came from the most conservative and cautious 

mind which ever ruled in our councils. 

Believing firmly the time would soon come when 

emancipation must be proclaimed, Lincoln had long 

been earnestly, — almost pathetically, — urging the 

*"I aver that, to this day, I have done no official act in 
mere deference to my abstract judgment and feeling on 
slavery." (Lincoln to A. G. Hodges, April 4-, 1864.) 

20 



border States to themselves adopt gradual emanci- 
pation and take compensation for their slaves. He 
procured the passage of an act by Congress under 
which they could have done this, and in a proclama- 
tion upon the subject, issued May 19, 1862, he elo- 
quently said: "To the people of these (border) States 
I now earnestly appeal. I do not argue, — I beseech 
you to make the argument for yourselves. You can 
not, if you would, be blind to the signs of the times. 
* * * This proposal makes common cause for a com- 
mon object. * * * It acts not the Pharisee. * * * 
So much good has not been done by one effort in all 
past time as in the providence of God it is now your 
high privilege to do. May the vast future not have 
to lament that you have neglected it." Again, to the 
Senators and Representatives of the border States 
he in July, 1862, addressed a letter, in which, among 
other things, he told them the war would soon de- 
stroy slavery in their States "by mere friction and 
abrasion." He told them much of the value of slave 
property was already gone and urged them to favor 
compensated emancipation, and then, with that 
terseness and force of which he was so great a mas- 
ter, he added: "How much better for you as seller 
and the nation as buyer to sell out and buy out that 
without which the war never could have been, than 
to sink both the thing to be sold and the price of it 
in cutting one another's throats." 

21 



It seems incredible, in the light of events, that 
such appeals to the good sense and the true inter- 
ests of the border States could have fallen upon deaf 
ears, and the fact that Lincoln's border-State policy 
was scoffed alike by those it sought to benefit and 
by those northern idealists, like Horace Greeley and 
Wendell Phillips, who were always ready to burn 
other people upon the pyre of their immolating good- 
ness, only serves to illustrate the deep intrenchment 
of slavery in the popular interest and prejudice. 
If Lincoln could in the spring of 1862 have wrested 
from all future sympathy with the rebellion those 
slave States which remained in the Union, by in- 
ducing them to voluntarily adopt emancipation, by 
that very act the great game would have been won. 
Had the one State of Kentucky heeded Lincoln's 
appeal and voluntarily abolished slavery, it would 
have been a moral blow more decisive than many mil- 
itary victories, and would have shaken the Southern 
Confederacy to its ver}^ foundations. 

Lincoln had always realized that to check the 
spread of slavery was a long step towards its aboli- 
tion. In 1858 he wisely said the country must ulti- 
mately become "all one thing or all the other." The 
wise men of the south clearly saw this was true, and 
acted upon it. Had slavery been admitted to all our 
new territories freely from the first it would soon 
have become national, and Robert Toombs might 

22 



have fulfilled his threat to call the roil of his slaves 
at the foot of Bunker Hill monument. On the other 
hand, had slavery been strictly confined to the area 
it occupied prior to 1820, emancipation would prob- 
ably have come long - before this time, even had there 
been no war. 

In proclaiming' freedom Lincoln is commonly 
thought to have reached the summit of his moral 
grandeur. The act was certainly great in itself and 
equally great in the manner of its accomplishment. 
It was natural, however, that admirers of the great 
anti-slavery agitators should dispute Lincoln's title 
to the historic credit for emancipation. Many 
thought Lincoln's proclamation lost its moral gran d 
eur in the fact that it was issued under the force of 
military necessity, and thus became a mere incident 
in the preservation of the Union. I must, however, 
dissent from this view, and insist that Abraham 
Lincoln's abolitionism did not lose its ethical qual- 
ity in its respect for established law and in its well 
tempered expediency. Any fool could shout and 
say slavey must be abolished, but it took a states- 
man to find a way to abolish it. The noble old 
abolitionists blew the reckless clarion blast which 
alarmed the northern conscience and precipitated 
the conflict. The flashlight of their audacious and 
consuming eloquence fell upon slavery and revealed 



23 



its enormity. But the man who marshaled and led 
the material and moral forces which finally crushed 
the rebellion and destroyed slavery had need to be 
something - more than a reckless agitator. 

Prominent in our war period, upon the northern 
side, were many idealists, among whom some of the 
old "higher law" abolitionists were the purest types. 
An idealist (to depart somewhat from the lexicons) 
is one who counts his chickens before the eggs have 
been laid. He is lacking in a sense of the propor- 
tion and relation of things, and takes himself so 
seriously that he loses the power of seeing himself 
as others see him. In the last analysis he lacks 
humor. In the rapturous contemplation of the end 
he forgets all about means. The northern idealists 
thought if Lincoln would only sound a great blast 
upon a ram's horn all the walls of the Jericho of 
rebellion would fall flat. Acknowledging no re- 
sponsibility, these men could talk much nonsense 
without having to account for the folly of their 
speech. Lincoln, however, was President, and as 
such he felt gravely responsible to the country for 
his every act and word. He did not fly through the 
air with the theorists, but walked slowly and pain- 
fully upon the ground, — and rough, indeed, was his 
footing. He walked among the "plain people" and 
communed with them day by day, and as he walked 
he took note of all the rocks and chasms and quag- 

24 



mires which lay in his pathway, — little matters, for 
which the mere theorists felt only contempt. 

The old abolitionists had so long - combated a ma- 
jority upon the slavery issue that they could not 
appreciate the wisdom of a President who waited 
for a majority before acting - . To Wendell Phillips, 
the agitator, delivering a philippic against slavery, 
the approval of a majority was not necessary. His 
temperament was such that the violent opposition 
of numbers acted upon him as a stimulant. But to 
Lincoln the President, formulating and enforcing 
practical measures of government for a sovereign 
people, the moral support of public opinion was 
an absolute necessity. Those who, almost before 
Lincoln's right hand was lowered, insisted that he 
should abandon the constitution he had sworn to 
support and resort to that vague delusion called 
the "higher law," without any then apparent mili- 
tary necessity, had little appreciation of the man 
or the occasion. In the days of war most of these 
men went their own wild, unreasoning way, and 
heaped obloquy upon the man who was completing 
their work in the only possible way it could then 
have been completed. 

The distinct issue on which Lincoln won the 
presidency was the prevention of the spread of 
slavery, — not its abolition, — and on that issue he 
received less than one-half of the popular vote, ex- 

25 



eluding from the calculation the votes of the States 
that afterwards seceded. However great may be 
the wonder of it in the light of events, the fact is 
that a large majority of the whole American people 
stood, in 1861, against Mr. Lincoln's moderate per- 
sonal views on the slavery question. Out of twenty- 
three christian ministers residing in Springfield, Illi- 
nois, in 1860, twenty were opposed to the election of 
Mr. Lincoln. A quarrel between two factions of the 
democratic party as to the particular degree of legal 
encouragement slavery should receive in its strug- 
gle for territory and supremacy had resulted in Lin- 
coln's election. No wonder he refused to at once 
launch an emancipation policy when even his own 
moderate principle of slavery restriction could 
scarcely be sustained. 

Lincoln was acquainted, perhaps better than any 
other public man, with that prejudice which in those 
days often led even good Union men, in the western 
States, to declare they would not support an "aboli- 
tion war." He knew many good friends of the Union 
believed that emancipation would be followed by a 
horrible war of races or by a still more horrible amal- 
gamation of whites and blacks. To such he held 
out his zealous but impracticable scheme of coloniz- 
ing the negroes in South America or Africa. It was 
exactly because Lincoln's early associations had 
so thoroughly familiarized him with the prejudice 

26 



which used to fairly shudder at sound of the then 
current phrase "nigger equality," — nay, because he 
even partook in a degree of that prejudice himself, — 
that he proved the fittest man to stand at the helm. 
He thrust forward the Union issue because he knew 
there were far more men in the north for the Union 
than for emancipation. The boast, early made, that 
a united south would be hurled against a divided 
north, was, upon the slavery question, fully real- 
ized. Lincoln's party was distinctly pledged not to 
disturb slavery in the States where it existed, and 
the pro-slavery Unionist was as vehement in urging 
the sanctity of this promise as the eastern radical 
was in declaring that treason had put slavery be- 
yond constitutional protection. When the emanci- 
pation proclamation was at length issued it was 
bitterly assailed as a subversion of the constitu- 
tion, and yet it is remarkable that none of his critics 
ever stated the legal case against emancipation so 
strongly or so well as Lincoln once stated it himself. 
To O. H. Browning, who scolded him for revoking 
Fremont's emancipation proclamation, he on Sep- 
tember 22, 1861. wrote: "If the General needs them 
[the slaves] he can seize them and use them, but 
when the need is past it is not for him to fix their 
permanent future condition. That must be settled 
according to the laws made by law-makers, and not 
by military proclamations. The proclamation on 

27 



the point in question is simply dictatorship. It as- 
sumes that the General may do anything he pleases: 
confiscate the lands and free the slaves of loyal peo- 
ple as well as of disloyal ones. And going - the whole 
figure, I have no doubt, would be more popular with 
some thoughtless people than that which has been 
done. But I cannot assume this reckless position 
nor allow others to assume it on my responsibility. 
You speak of it as being the only means of saving 
the government. On the contrary, it is, itself, a sur- 
render of the government. Can it be pretended that 
it is any longer the government of the United States 
— any government of constitution and laws — where- 
in a general or President may make permanent rules 
of property by proclamation? * * * What I ob- 
ject to is, that I, as President, shall expressly or 
impliedly seize and exercise the permanant legisla 
tive functions of the government." 

This whole letter to Browning is most interesting 
in a study of the development of the emancipation 
policy, and should be compared with his proclama- 
tion annulling the emancipation edict of Gen. Hun- 
ter, eight months later, May 19, 1862. In the latter 
he says: "Whether it be competent for me, as com- 
mander-in-chief of the army and navy, to declare the 
slaves of any State or States free, and whether at 
any time, in any case, it shall have become a neces- 
sity indispensable to the maintenance of the gov- 

28 



ernment to exercise such supposed power, are ques- 
tions which, under my responsibility, I reserve to 
myself and which I cannot feel justified in leaving 
to the decision of commanders in the field." Here 
was a distinct advance upon the position announced 
in the Browning - letter. He had found the true basis 
for his emancipation policy, and only awaited the de- 
velopment of public opinion and the march of events. 

Lincoln had the sense to keep his eye upon great 
facts and to reckon with large causes. He was sa- 
gacious enough to perceive that the supreme issue 
of the struggle was national preservation, and that 
this issue embraced the slavery question and all 
others. Greeley's silly advice to let the southern 
States "go in peace," and Wendell Phillips' still more 
picturesque folly that we would "build a bridge of 
gold and pay their toll over it," could meet no favor 
in a mind so sane as Lincoln's. He knew if the gov- 
ernment proved strong enough to cope with the re- 
bellion it would, in the end, prove strong enough to 
deal with slavery and ultimately abolish it by peace- 
ful means. He said in his Peoria speech, in 1854: 
"Much as I hate slavery, I would consent to the ex- 
tension of it rather than see the Union dissolved, 
just as I would consent to any great evil to avoid a 
greater one." From this sentiment he never receded. 

Had the southern people acquiesced in Lincoln's 
election and in the supremacy of his doctrines they 

29 



would certainly have prolonged slavery, and in the 
end, perhaps, have insured a liberal compensation 
for their slaves. But ultimately either slavery or 
the Union had to go down. 

I have sometimes thought Lincoln, with pro- 
phetic eye, saw the destruction of slavery from the 
very beginning", but with a patience and self-control 
which find no parallel he waited the slow turning- 
of the mills of the gods. He had the large sense 
to perceive that the Spirit of the Times would in 
the end abolish slavery, and that to force the issue 
would only insure the success of the Confederacy. 
He recognized a plan higher than human plans. He 
knew when he wrote the Greeley letter that the 
march of events had put it past human power to 
save slavery with the Union. He felt that a hand 
mightier than his own was writing the doom of 
slavery upon the fiery war-cloud, and so believing, 
and so praying, too, he patiently accepted criticism, 
and even calumny, — first from the extreme aboli- 
tionists and afterwards from the pro-slavery Union- 
ists. He knew a premature expression, officially, 
of his belief that the war was destined to destroy 
slavery would take from the Union army a hun- 
dred thousand bayonets and that this might turn 
the tide against the Union. Had the border slave 
States been repelled by the least rudeness of treat- 
ment from the administration the Union would prob- 

30 



ably never have been saved. Realizing that public 
opinion was the only effective abolitionist, Lincoln 
stayed his pen and allowed the Union volunteers 
to write with their bayonets, in the blood of angry 
battles, the real proclamation of freedom. He knew 
well that a proclamation so written would never 
need to be recanted. 

In the spring of 1861 there were thousands of 
persons in the north who saw in Lincoln only a well- 
meaning", shrewd, but inexperienced person, whose 
redeeming trait they hoped, would prove to be docil- 
ity. Each of these persons felt sure Lincoln would 
need much sage advice, and expected to supply 
it, and even to largely control his administration. 
These self-appointed guardians were unprepared to 
receive a national savior from the Nazareth of the 
prairies. They at once began telling Lincoln what 
to do, and it has been aptly said he received worse 
advice, and more of it, than any statesman who ever 
lived. This will not seem wonderful when we re- 
member how utterly the sudden rending of the Union 
had dazed the American people. In the confusion 
of that awful crisis even wise men said and did silly 
things. William H. Seward, — certainly a wise states- 
man, — in the face of threatened civil war lost both 
heart and judgment and gave Lincoln some incredi- 
bly foolish advise. Chase marred his otherwise 
splendid record with querulous carpings against a 

31 



chief he did not in any degree understand and whose 
superior he felt he was. That Lincoln, inexperi- 
enced as he was, "kept his head" through the panic 
of timidity, distrust and hysteria which marked the 
early months of his administration, gently but firmly 
resisting the bad advice which came to him from so 
many high sources, is one of the strongest proofs of 
the firm texture of his mind. To keep on good terms 
with advisers of assumed superiority and at the same 
time not take their advice requires great shrewdness 
and tact, and no statesman ever knew better how to 
do this than Lincoln. He was too great to stand for a 
moment upon mere pride of opinion. He was always 
ready to hear advice, but his ultimate monitor was 
within. He said: "It is my duty to hear all, but at 
last I must, within my sphere, judge what to do and 
what to forbear." This self-reliance, in practice, 
gave mortal offense to many prominent republicans, 
who could never bring themselves to admit that the 
basis of it was real superiority, and not arrogance. 
Lincoln was ruling a democracy, and to rule a 
real democracy involves problems never thought of 
by such rulers as Caesar, Cromwell and Napoleon. 
He had a great military problem, and this was com- 
plicated with a still more perplexing political prob- 
lem, to say nothing of the other problems that were 
presented by our foreign relations. An early blow 
at slavery, it was thought, would assist us with f or- 

32 



eign countries, but Lincoln knew such a move would 
set our domestic politics awry. His first wise thought 
was to keep the peace among the adherents of the 
Union, and this desire furnishes the key to his whole 
policy. He recognized no line of political cleavage 
save that between the loyal and disloyal. He often 
spoke of "balancing matters," and no man ever knew 
better than he how to strike the prudent average. 

If any man in this world ever understood that 
capricious thing called "public opinion" that man 
was Abraham Lincoln. He watched the current of 
public thought and prejudice as intently as a cau- 
tious pilot watches the face of a river for evidence 
of bars and snags. He possessed a wonderful sixth 
sense for the feeling of the average American. His 
ear was always to the ground. He caught the faintest 
sound which presaged a storm of popular passion, 
and the sagacity and skill with which he avoided 
the numberless eddies and whirlpools of the slavery 
question, while steering on to the great end of na- 
tional preservation, have, in my judgment, never 
been equaled in the field of statesmanship. 

The great proclamation was wisely withheld un- 
til the extreme anti-slavery element in New England 
was ready to break from the vanguard of the Union 
column, and thus it came late enough in the evolu- 
tion of public opinion to barely save to the cause 



33 



the still more important rearguard in the border and 
western States. 

Thus we see it was a main feature of Lincoln's 
statesmanship that he distinctly comprehended his 
problem; and not only his one great problem, but 
all its minor related problems. Such was the clear- 
ness of his vision, such the breadth of his views, 
such the grasp and sanity of his judgment, that 
within his policy all things found their proper place 
and relation, and all the din and smoke of terrific 
conflict could not confuse him or put him from his 
purpose. To use an illustration of his own kind, he 
never went snipe-shooting when there were bear in 
sight. He succeeded in holding the border slave 
States in line upon the paramount Union issue even 
while the institution of slavery, which they wished 
to save, was being trampled to death beneath the 
feet of the Union army. He played the eager Union 
sentiment of the west against the institution of 
slavery, which had caused the war, until the west 
finally came to agree with New England that slav- 
ery must be struck down. In other words, Lincoln 
bridged with his policy the vast stretch of opinion 
which lay between the rabid abolitionism of the east 
and the pro-slavery Unionism of the western and 
border States, and thus he was at last able to hurl 
the whole force of Union sentiment on this side of 
the battle line against the armies of the Confederacy. 

34 



A task so complex called for a statesman of broad 
views, great self-poise, iron endurance and sublime 
courage — courag"e to act, and, even in a greater de- 
gree, courage to forbear. Struggling, like Laocoon, 
in the serpent-coils of the slavery complication, 
stung by the wasps of incontinent radicalism, hec- 
tored by swarms of northern men who set the letter 
of the constitution above the nation's life, Lincoln 
yet had the monumental patience and foresight to 
nearly always do and say the wise thing. "The oc- 
casion is piled high with difficulty," said he, "and we 
must rise with the occasion." 

Lincoln's search for a general was long and pain- 
ful and at first quite as fruitless as that of Diogenes 
for an honest man, — and he carried a better lantern 
than Diogenes ever saw. A few military victories 
would have cleared the atmosphere, but when Lin- 
coln asked his generals for victories they tried to 
swap jobs with him, and gave him advice on the 
slavery question. Gen. McClellan, just after fleeing 
in panic from the Chickahominy with a magnificent 
army, which under a commander of enterprise and 
courage would have bivouacked in the Confederate 
capital, found time to write Lincoln a lengthy and 
impudent letter of general advice, in which, among 
many other impertinences, he said "the abolition of 
slavery must not be thought of." On the other hand, 
two or three little upstarts in the field, never for- 

35 



midable except to their own friends, sought the 
cheap applause of the unthinking - by issuing procla- 
mations of emancipation in their military districts, 
thus adding to the embarrassments of the one great, 
patient man who saw all the phases of the Union 
problem. Whittier's ode to one of these Lilliputians 
makes very sad reading in the light of history. 

It is quite the fashion to say that previous to 
1860 Lincoln had not shown the qualities of politi- 
cal leadership, and that his nomination for President 
was merely a happy accident of politics. Professor 
VonHolst, in his Constitutional History, has refuted 
this error. Lincoln's nomination was no accidental 
honor, won by superior management over the real 
leaders of the party. In the great revolt of 1854 
against the conspiracy to open up new territory to 
slavey, though less officially conspicuous than Sew- 
ard, Lincoln soon proved himself the most sagacious 
leader of the new party. Lincoln's action in one 
conspicuous party crisis refutes, once for all, the 
notion that he drifted helplessly with the tide and 
was not a party leader. 

When Senator Douglas, at the winter session of 
1857-8, broke with Buchanan and made his brilliant 
fight in the Senate against the admission of Kansas 
as a slave State under the fraudulent Lecompton 
constitution, many prominent anti-slavery men were 
dazzled by the political pyrotechnics of the "Little 

36 



Giant." Douglas actually hypnotized his former an- 
tagonists into the belief that he was fighting' their 
battles for them. Horace Greeley accepted him as 
a new Moses, and advised the Illinois republicans 
to support him for re-election to the Senate. Seward 
prudently said nothing, but he was well known to 
be ready to acquiesce in the leadership of Douglas 
and in his re-election. He, indeed, made a speech 
in the Senate virtually waiving the vital republican 
principle, "No more slave territory." Politics never 
made more strange bed-fellows than when the free- 
soilers of New England were found sympathizing 
with Douglas in his contest for re-election. It was 
Lincoln alone who saw clearly that for the repub- 
licans to support Douglas for the Senate would be 
a practical surrender upon the slavery question. 
He declared the issue was deeper than "the mere 
question of fact" whether a particular constitution 
for Kansas had been legally adopted by the voters. 
He showed the republicans that the man who had 
repeatedly declared he did not care "whether slav- 
ery was voted up or voted down" in Kansas, just 
so the vote was fair, could not be safely entrusted 
with the ark of the republican covenant; and when 
Douglas returned to Illinois in triumph to receive 
the plaudits of his admirers, Lincoln promptly chal- 
lenged him to mortal political combat. In the 
great debate which followed, Lincoln exhumed from 

37 



out the clap-trap and rubbish in which sophistry 
sought to envelop it, the essential moral question 
of that great controversy. It was Lincoln, alone, 
who did this. In his speech at Springfield, June 16, 
1858, — the greatest political speech ever delivered 
in this country, — he boldl} T proclaimed the startling 
truth that we had come to the crisis where the 
country must choose, once for all, between freedom 
and slavery as a permanent national policy or else 
see the "divided house" topple down. This was more 
than four months before Seward proclaimed the 
"irrepressible conflict" in his Rochester speech. The 
master feats of political jugglery by which the "Lit- 
tle Giant" hoped to save his popularity in the north 
without quite ruining his political prospects in the 
south came to a speedy end before the keen and 
searching logic of his antagonist. When Lincoln 
was defeated for the Senate, as his friends warned 
him would be the case upon so radical a platform as 
he had made for himself, he accepted the result with 
the complacency of a true philosopher. He knew 
that while he had lost his battle he had not lost his 
principles. Nay, he knew he had laid the founda- 
tions of ultimate success for the cause of freedom. 
He had done more than this: he had proved him- 
self the most sagacious, self-sacrificing and fearless 
leader of the new party, by true merit and service 
raised to that great eminence. 

38 



Equally absurd is it to say that after this great 
debate with Douglas, iu 1858, Lincoln was an "un- 
known man." His antagonist was the most noted 
man in the politics of that day. It was not without 
reason that he was called a "giant," for a giant, in- 
deed, he was in point of political shrewdness, force 
and audacity. The newspapers took note of every 
move of the great Illinois Senator, and Lincoln's 
temerity in challenging him excited wonder. The 
debate was, of course, followed intently by every 
man who paid any attention whatever to political 
affairs. However obscure Lincoln may previously 
have been, his conflict with Dougias brought him 
into the very focus of public attention. His great 
plainness and simplicity of speech and argument 
won upon all who heard or read what he said. He 
never talked over the heads of his hearers. His were 
the arguments against slavery which found lodg- 
ment in the minds and hearts of the common people. 
His speech at Peoria, October 16, 1854; his speech 
at Springfield, June 16, 1858; his debates with Doug- 
las, and his speech at Cooper Institute, New York, 
February 27, 1860, are easily the masterpieces of all 
the anti- slavery literature preceding - the war. In 
them are the body and the blood of the republican- 
ism of that day. In them Lincoln made the platform 
whereon he won the battle for slavery restriction.* 

*For some remarks upon Lincoln's "lost speech" as repro- 
duced by Whitney, see Appendix. 

39 



Furthermore, Lincoln was not, at any period of 
his career, of that easy-going temper which runs 
with the tide. While he was President some thought 
he drifted aimlessly, but he in fact sailed the ship. 
His strong hand was always upon the helm, but he 
had sense enough to know the ship could not be 
sailed against wind and tide. When he met baffling 
weather he knew how to tack. He could even seek 
a temporary haven and wait for fair winds, but he 
never turned back or abandoned the journey. He 
knew there was time for all things, and he never 
acted under the influence of panic. He abode his 
time, and with a patience as deep as nature, as 
unfailing as destiny, he waited for events. 

The most conspicuous personal quality of Lin- 
coln, as I see him, is manly strength — a self-confi- 
dence heroic but unexpressed. To me, Lincoln seems 
on great occasions a solitary man, communing with 
himself; never, indeed, arrogant; not by any means 
always seeing his way through to the end, but be- 
lieving, with much confidence, he saw as far as any, 
and yet prudently concealing, in large degree, the 
confidence he felt in the correctness of his own 
views. I am aware few took this view of Lincoln 
in his lifetime. The extreme good-fellowship of his 
lighter hours seems to disprove it; and so many in- 
cidents are current showing his tenderness of heart, 
— such as his strangely intense and emotional let- 

40 



ters to Joshua Speed, and the alacrity with which 
he pardoned condemned soldiers against the pro- 
tests of his generals, — that the world is in danger 
of concluding that Lincoln's chief side was his emo- 
tional side and that there was in him no iron. That 
he was gentle, merciful, kind and tolerant, that he 
was above petty resentments and always ready to 
cover the faults of his fellows with the mantle of 
charity, no one will deny. But these qualities were 
not incompatible with strength of character. To be 
firm and enforce one's purpose it is not necessary to 
be a tyrant, and what seemed weakness in some of 
Lincoln's public acts was often the result of pru- 
dence and sound judgment. For instance, I doubt 
whether Lincoln ever set aside a death sentence 
when it was not good policy to do it. We have, I hope, 
gotten far past the barbarism of shooting a soldier 
boy to death for sleeping at his post, and Lincoln had 
too much sense to approve such a sentence though 
his heart had been harder than stone. He once re- 
marked, on taking up his pen to pardon a condemned 
soldier: "I think this boy can do us more good above 
ground than under it." This is evidence that his 
view of such matters was practical as well as hu- 
mane. But convictions for offenses which involved 
a betrayal of the cause he could approve without a 
qualm, and he did approve many of them, the convic- 
tion of Fitz John Porter being the most conspicuous. 

41 



I now go a step further, and say Lincoln was a 
great ruler of men; and the man who has learned to 
rule others must have begun by learning - to rule him- 
self. Lincoln, contrary to current belief, was capa- 
ble of terrific anger, but his wonderful self-control 
ordinarily enabled him to conceal the storms of pas- 
sion that must often have rent bis soul throughout 
the trying days of the war. He never blustered; 
his method of ruling was not so crude. Nor was he 
one of Gratiano's men, whose visages, we are told, 

"Do cream and mantle like a standing pond, 
And do a willful stillness entertain 
With purpose to be dressed in an opinion 
Of wisdom, gravity, profound conceit, 
As who should say, 'I am Sir Oracle. 
And when I ope my lips let no dog bark.'" 

On the contrary, Lincoln was always simple, nat- 
ural, — almost boyish. He disdained all owlish shows 
of superior wisdom. He was perfectly willing the 
men he ruled should believe they were ruling him. 
He did not fear that some upstart would cheat his- 
tory and wear his laurels. Referring to the capital 
way in which he got along with Senator Sumner, he 
said, with a sly twinkle in his eye, "He thinks he 
manages me." I think Lincoln knew he was build- 
ing for eternity, but with a serene confidence he com- 
mitted to time the keeping of his matchless fame. 
Secretary Stanton, according to one account, raised 
his hand above the President's body a moment after 
he had breathed his last, and said, "There lies the 

42 



greatest ruler of men that has ever lived." Great 
testimony is this, coming' from Stanton. 

A very great man is elemental. He is, so to 
speak, a grand division of nature. We now see that 
Lincoln's purpose and policy moved through the war 
with all the steadiness and certainty of a cosmic 
force. His patience under vast discouragements as- 
sumes the character of the patience of nature itself. 
His spirit was never ruffled by enmity or elated by 
vanity. When a little man is permitted to step sud- 
denly from a puncheon floor to velvet he is apt to 
become giddy. The political "beggar-on-horseback," 
often met with under a popular government, gener- 
ally thinks, with Jack Cade, that all the sewers are 
g'oing to run red with claret because he is king. 
Though coming from a lowly estate, Lincoln seemed 
unconscious of his position as the first man of the 
nation. True to the class which produced him, he 
left no degrading apology for his breeding or the 
meagerness of his early conditions. His manliness 
was in his blood, and we now see that there was 
never taken to the White House a truer dignity of 
character, a more firmly-poised intellect or a more 
intelligent self-reliance than went there from the 
prairies of Illinois with Abraham Lincoln. 

We have seen that Lincoln stands in American 
history first for national unity. We have seen that 
he stands also for liberty and the rights of man in 

43 



subordination to established law. We have seen him, 
strong as the "unwedgeable and knarled oak/' bend- 
ing" others to his purpose. We have also seen him 
exercising" a wisdom and tact rarely found among 
the endowments of man. To all this I now add that 
he was the greatest popular leader who has appeared 
in our country. Out of the jungies of practical poli- 
tics have grown but few oaks of statesmanship, but 
Lincoln was one of these oaks; and it is proper, I 
think, to call him a practical politician in the high- 
est and best sense of that term. In this field, with 
the sole exception of Thomas Jefferson, he finds in 
our history no rival. He was pre-eminently the "man 
of the people" — not the demagogue who used the peo- 
ple for his purpose, but the statesman who served 
them and whom they recognized as their own. He 
led the people for the people's good, and not for his 
own personal aggrandizement. In Abraham Lincoln 
the spirit of democracy was incarnate. What he 
called "the plain people" loved him in life and have 
canonized him in death, for it is only the common 
people who can confer enduring fame. So com- 
plete was his belief in the intelligence and honesty 
of the American people that he never found it ex- 
pedient to flatter them, but gave them always his 
honest thoughts. He did not reach the people sec- 
ondarily, through the medium of local politicians, 
but established his political relations directly with 

44 



every citizen of the republic. He had no use for the 
political "machine" of later days. The standard of 
his judgment and feeling- was level with every con- 
dition of American life. His communion with the 
masses was no condescending - patronage but a gen- 
uine fellowship. He was at home everywhere; he 
perfectly understood ignorance and prejudice; he 
had charity for them, but he never played the dema- 
gogue by appealing to them. The coarseness of 
the vulgar and ignorant did not shock him as it 
does many good men who have not had Lincoln's 
experience. The truth is, the life of this wonderful 
man measures the whole vast distance between the 
top and the bottom layers of American society. He 
grew through all the strata, and at last flowered 
and bore fruit at the top. It has been well said that 
he lived all there was of American life, felt all there 
was of American experience, and therefore in his 
character and life and work he fairly represented 
and expressed the American people. 

Lincoln was great enough to sink himself com- 
pletely in bis cause. The fact that Stanton had once 
treated him with professional discourtesy and had 
then lately criticised him in his own bitter fashion 
was to Lincoln's mind no reason why Stanton should 
not be made Secretary of War when it was deemed 
his appointment would most aid the cause. The 
friends of Chase were surprised to learn, in that 

45 



eminent man's appointment as chief justice, that his 
resignation of the Treasury, though petulent and 
ill-judged, had left no iron in the soul of the great 
President. It is now known that Lincoln said, with 
the resignation of Chase then in his hands unac- 
cepted, that Chase should be chief justice if a va- 
cancy arose. A little earlier, when, through the 
publication of the "Pomeroy Circular," the fact came 
to light that Chase was scheming against his chief 
for the presidential nomination in 1864, and Chase, 
in some confusion at the disclosure, offered his resig- 
nation, Lincoln wrote him these wonderful words: 
"Whether you shall remain at the head of the Treas- 
ury department is a question which I will not per- 
mit myself to consider from any standpoint other 
than my judgment of the public service, and in that 
view I do not perceive occasion for a change." Was 
this the letter of a mere politician? 

Only a President of great breadth could have writ- 
ten to Grant after the fall of Vicksburg, "I now wish 
to make a personal acknowledgment that you were 
right and I was wrong;" and it was Lincoln alone 
who, in the face of much bitter detraction, saved Gen- 
eral Grant to the cause and gave him the opportunity 
to finally crush the rebellion. He expressed the 
matter tersely: "I can't spare that man; he fights." 

Lincoln's magnanimous treatment of Seward after 
that gentleman, with great impertinence and folly, 

46 



had suggested a practical abdication in his favor, 
is now well known; and a still better illustration of 
the same spirit has come to light since the volumi- 
nous biography by Nicolay and Hay was published. 
Just after the battle of Gettysburg, Lincoln thought 
that prompt pursuit and battle by Meade would de- 
stroy Lee's army before it could re-cross the swollen 
Potomac. Meade's delay and failure to seize his 
great opportunity deeply grieved and annoyed the 
President, who finally sent a peremptory order to 
forthwith attack Lee, which order was accompanied 
by perhaps the most remarkable note ever sent by 
a commander to his subordinate. It ran about thus: 
"This order is not of record. If you are successful 
you may destroy it, together with this note; if you 
fail, publish the order, and I will take the responsi- 
bility." But even this stimulant did not move Meade.* 



*An autograph letter of the late Hon. James Harlan, of 
Mt. Pleasant, Iowa, ex-Secretary of the Interior under Lin- 
coln, written to the author April 17, 1897, is conclusive author- 
ity for the statement in the text. He writes: "The President 
sent an order, privately, directing- Gen. Meade to follow up 
his victory by an immediate attack on Lee's retreating army, 
and thus, if possible, prevent the re-crossing of the Potomac 
by the Confederate forces, accompanied by a confidential 
letter authorizing him to make the order public in case of 
disaster and in case of success to destroy both the order and 
confidential letter. This much you may rely upon as historic- 
ally true. Whether or not these papers ever reached Gen. 
Meade I am not able to say. I had supposed, prior to the re- 
ceipt of your letter, that this incident had remained unknown 
for twenty years after the close of the war of the rebellion to 
ever3 T body except Gen. Meade, Robert T. Lincoln and myself." 

47 



But why re-count such minor incidents to prove 
Lincoln's unselfish spirit, when it is well known he 
refused to take to himself the least credit for the 
act of emancipation? He knew the entire colored 
race, living - and to come, grateful for the boon of 
freedom at his hands, were ready to place his name 
among the immortals. He knew the civilized world 
stood ready with a laurel crown for the emancipator 
of a race, and yet he could put that crown aside and 
say: "I have not controlled events; events have 
controlled me; God alone can claim it." 

Lincoln had read in all charity the secrets of 
the wonderful book of human nature, and had there 
learned to allow for the shortcomings of even ene- 
mies. He had too much breadth for bitterness. 
Passion never blew out the lamp of his reason, and 
from no lips ever came more gracefully the soft an- 
swer which turneth away wrath. He had the char- 
ity to say, "The southern people are just what we 
should be in their situation." Though this man of 
mercy and gentleness was called by destiny to con- 
duct a gigantic and cruel civil war; though he stood 
for years at the very storm-center of an era of pas- 
sion and hate; though all the pent-up fury and rage 
of fifty years of bitter contention beat upon him, he 
left behind not a single bitter memory, and malice 
itself was disarmed before his great heart was cold. 
His utterances will be searched in vain for one harsh 

48 



word against any of the southern people, and it is 
as appropriate as it is touching- that a Confederate 
soldier now comes forward as one of his most elo- 
quent and appreciative eulogists. 

Lincoln was not schooled or learned, but he was 
educated. He had endured all the agonies of com- 
plete mental discipline. The process of his educa- 
tion never ceased, but he spent no time learning the 
wrong things. His mind was not clogged with use- 
less lumber. His knowledge was all correlated, and 
his intellectual weapons were as keen as blades of 
Damascus. His facts were not numerous, but they 
were always ready for use. He had read men more 
than books, and it was with men — not books — he 
had to deal. He studied other men and he also 
studied himself. He cross-examined his own soul. 
His growth was evolution rather than acquisition 
Botanists tell of a class of plants called the ex- 
ogenous, which grow by taking on layers from the 
outside, and of another class called the endogenous, 
which grow from within — from the heart. Lincoln, 
like the endogenous plant, grew from within. He 
expanded by the action of subjective moral and in- 
tellectual forces. His mind literally worked itself 
clear. In all classifications of humankind Lincoln 
will stand as an individual, akin to all classes but 
belonging exclusively to none. 



49 



Lincoln had the best of legal minds, but fortu- 
nately he never degenerated into a mere lawyer. He 
took the kernel and rejected the husk. Those who 
would appreciate his great grasp of constitutional 
questions must read his State papers and his letters 
wherein he discusses the war power of the executive 
over slavery and over the right of habeas corpus. 

This man had no extensive acquaintance with 
general literature. He told Carpenter, who spent 
six months at the White House painting a charac- 
terless picture, that he never read a novel clear 
through. Scott, Thackeray and Hawthorne wrote 
all their novels within the limits of Lincoln's life- 
time, and in the same period Dickens wrote all but 
two of his; yet Lincoln appears to have known no 
more of these authors than he did of iEschylus or 
Homer. To a mind like his, that which has actually 
happened in this world is far more interesting and 
far more dramatic than the mere dreams of fiction. 
In poetry he is known to have read Burns and By- 
ron, and Shakespeare in part, and of the plays he 
rightly judged that Macbeth was greatest. Mourn- 
ful verses seemed to strike a chord in his heart, and 
he was not over-critical as to literary quality. He 
had read and studied the Bible in the translation of 
King James, and the influence of its pure and sim- 
ple style is everywhere apparent in what he wrote. 
Doubtless Lincoln knew, in outline at least, the his- 

50 



tory of other countries besides his own, but evidence 
of the fact is not preserved in his writing's. 

In all the writing's of Lincoln there are not to 
be found more than two or three allusions to the 
classic myths. In an early sophomoric production 
he barely mentioned the names of Caesar and Alex- 
ander. Once in a letter he referred to Procrustes 
and his fabled bedstead, and sometimes he jocularly 
spoke of Stanton, his Secretary of War, as "Mars." 
Between his nomination and election he read Plu- 
tarch 's Lives, in order to justify a statement made 
by Scripps in a campaign biography. If he ever 
read the rich mythology of Greece and Rome it 
made little impression upon him. Mercury, with 
winged feet, seems to have brought him no message 
from the gods of old. He heard not the thunders of 
Jove, the sobs of Niobe, nor the entracing strains 
of Orpheus' harp; and }'et this man, unschooled and 
unlearned, grasped and solved the political problem 
of his country and his time.* 

But if Lincoln did not read widety, neither did 

he read anything lightly. He never contracted men- 

*Mr. Joseph Jefferson, in his autobiography, (pagpe 30,) 
makes Lincoln, in what he terms a "harangue" to the city 
council of Springfield, Illinois, made in 1839, "trace the his- 
tory of the drama from the time when Thespis acted in a 
cart, to the stage of to-day." Those who have studied the 
style of Lincoln and know the range of his illustrations will 
be somewhat surprised to know that in 1839 he took Athens, 
B. C 600, as his starting point in persuading the city fathers 
of an obscure western town to repeal an unjust tax against 

51 



tal indigestion by gorging - his mind with literary- 
sweetmeats. His mental grasp was something won- 
derful. He never stopped until he had bounded a 
subject on all sides. He took nothing upon faith 
but would know the real truth, though he must, 
like doubting Thomas, thrust his own hand into the 
wound. The political history of the United States 
he knew in its minutest details, particularly those 
portions relating to slavery, and his ability to in- 
terpret historic facts and events in a philosophic 
way has never been surpassed. His logic was the 
joint product of honesty and common sense. He had 
the courage to know and face the truth. He was 
willing to go whithersoever his best thought led him. 
He shared with all great and noble minds that high, 
unfaltering faith that the right must in the end tri- 
umph. The closing sentence of his speech at Cooper 
Institute is the key to his whole life: "Let us have 
faith that right makes might, and in that faith let us, 
to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it." 
In point of literary merit Lincoln's writings will 
bear comparison with the best in the English lan- 
guage. His literary style was as unique as his per- 

players. Mr. Jefferson probably introduced Thespis and his 
cart into this interesting - account through some accident or 
substitution of the memory. He seems not to have known 
that Lincoln was himself then (1839) a member of the board 
of trustees of the town of Springfield. Whatever he did, 
therefore, must have been done in pursuance of his duties as 
a member of the board and not as the attorney of the elder 
Jefferson. 

52 



sonality — as characteristic of him as the great nose 
on his face. He wrote Saxon, and demonstrated 
that a large vocabulary and an ornate style are not 
necessary to the forceful expression of thought. He 
addressed himself first to the understanding and 
next to the heart. He was one of the greatest mas- 
ters of the art of statement that has ever written 
the English tongue. He knew the sources of preju- 
dice and the springs of action. Pathos and humor 
are judiciously mingled in whatever he said and 
wrote. He it was who, with the hand of a master, 
at last lovingly touched the chords which ag"ain 
swelled "the chorus of the Union." He could put a 
chapter of argument into ten words of speech. No 
illustration was too homely to be used provided it 
fit the case. To Hooker, who had proposed to cross 
the Rappahannock at an inopportune time, Lincoln 
wrote: "I would not take any risk of being entangled 
upon the river like an ox jumped half over a fence, 
and liable to be torn by dogs front and rear, without 
a fair chance to gore one way or kick the other." 

Again, discussing a plan of campaign, with an apt 
but inimitable homeliness he said if a certain general 
could not "skin" he could "hold a leg" for somebody 
else; and his pithy saying that "you can fool all of 
the people some of the time and some of the people 
all the time, but you can't fool all the people all the 
time," has become an aphorism of American politics. 

53 



In denying - the broad charge made by Douglas 
that he was in favor of negro equality, Lincoln 
pronounced, and on several occasions repeated, his 
great definition of the negro's rights. "In the right," 
said he, "to eat the bread, without leave of anybody, 
which his own hand earns, the negro is the equal 
of myself, of Judge Douglas, or of any other man." 
Again, speaking upon the same subject, he said: 
"I protest against the counterfeit logic which con- 
cludes because I do not want a black woman for a 
slave I must necessarily want her for a wife." 

When Douglas proposed to settle the vexed ques- 
tion of slavery extension by "popular sovereignty," 
Lincoln quaintly said this meant that "if any man 
chooses to enslave another no third man shall be 
allowed to object;" and the effort to maintain both 
the Dred Scott decision and "popular sovereignty" 
at the same time he said meant "that a thing may 
be lawfully driven away from a place where it has 
a lawful right to go." 

To a number of persons who called to remonstrate 
against his method of conducting the war, he said: 
"Suppose all you are worth was in gold and you had 
put it into the hands of Blondin to carry across Ni- 
agara; would you shake the cable, or keep shouting 
to him, 'Blondin! stand up a little straighter! Blon- 
din! stoop a little more! Go a little faster! Lean a 
little more to the north! Lean a little more to the 

54 



south?' No; you would hold your breath as well as 
your tongue, and keep your hands off until he was 
safe over." To another faultfinder, who thought Lin- 
coln's measures too severe, he wrote: "Would you 
drop the war where it is, or would you prosecute it 
with elder-stock squirts charged with rose water?" 

In reprimanding a young officer for quarreling, 
he said: "Quarrel not at all. * * * Yield larger 
things to which you can show no more than equal 
right, and yield lesser ones though clearly your own. 
Better give your path to a dog than be bitten by him 
in contesting for the right. Even killing the dog 
would not cure the bite." 

To his friend, Joshua Speed, he once said: "Speed, 
die when I may, I want it said of me by those who 
knew me best, that I always plucked a thistle and 
planted a flower when I thought a flower would grow." 

He could be terribly severe without descending 
to scurrility. Alluding to Douglas' "don't care" pol- 
icy on slavery he said: "I suppose the institution of 
slavery really looks small to him. He is so put up 
by nature that a lash upon his back would hurt him 
but a lash on anybody else's back does not hurt him." 

Replying to a committee of laboring men who 
waited upon him with an address in 1864, he closed 
with these words, than which I know of nothing 
wiser or better in the English language: "That some 
should be rich shows that others may become rich, 

55 



and hence is just encouragement to industry and en- 
terprise. Let not him who is houseless pull down 
the house of another, but let him labor diligently 
and build one for himself, thus by example assuring 
that his own shall be safe from violence when built." 
Would to God the vote-hucksters of to-day would 
speak to labor committees in so manly and so true 
a tone as that! 

A respectable volume could be filled with pass- 
ages illustrating the strong, quaint style, apt illus- 
tration, rare ^Esopian wisdom, and, upon proper 
occasion, the pathos and eloquence, which abound 
throughout the sayings and writings of Lincoln. 

Lincoln was certainly not without personal am- 
bition, and yet with only his own advancement as 
an object he would have lived and died in compara- 
tive obscurity. Had he been called to the bench he 
would have made a great and just judge, like John 
Marshall. It praises him to say that he could never 
have made himself famous except in a noble cause. 
Some have indulged in fruitless speculations as to 
what Lincoln would have been had he been differ- 
ently educated, and as to whether or not, in later 
years, he would have added to or taken from his 
fame had not the cruel assassin struck him down. 
Putting aside such idle thoughts, we may well bow 
in devout thankfulness that in the tide of time Lin- 
coln came as a boon to our country, and our hearts 

56 



may swell with a just pride that his career, from 
birth to final martyrdom, is the supremest attesta- 
tion of history to the value of our free institutions. 
What Washington had once been to the Ameri- 
can colonies Lincoln proved himself to the Ameri- 
can nation. It has been said the tears a good man 
staunches are shed upon his grave, and on Lincoln's 
was certainly poured out a flood of the keenest 
popular grief which political history has known. 
Even as one revered as the savior of a lost world 
was born in a stable and cradled in a manger, so 
this liberator of a race, — this savior of organized 
democracy in the western world, — first heard the 
lullaby of love in a rude frontier cabin, and with the 
earth of a common humanity still clinging upon him 
went forth to the agonies of martyrdom and fame. 
And there upon the sacred mount of service and suf- 
fering, behold! he, too, was transfigured before the 
nations. All the dross and contaminations of early 
environment at length fell away and left this lowly 
man of the people standing lofty and serene and 
spotless in the white light of history; and when that 
murderous pistol-shot at last stilled his tired heart 
and sped his weary soul to its reward, the sounds 
of bitter lamentation, coming in commingled strains 
alike from the palace and from the hovel, proclaimed 
but too truly that "our common manhood had lost 
a kinsman." 

57 



APPENDIX. 



LINCOLN S LOST SPEECH. 

I do not include among Lincoln's masterpieces the 
celebrated "lost speech" of Lincoln, delivered before the 
anti-Nebraska convention at Bloomington, 111., May 29, 
1856, because I am convinced that Whitney's pretended 
reproduction of the speech is inadequate, and, in fact, 
spurious. The evidence to prove this fact is of several 
different kinds : 

First — The direct evidence of those who heard the 
speech. Notwithstanding the great authority of the late 
Joseph Medill, who gave the Whitney version his partial 
sanction, the overwhelming weight of the testimony of 
those who heard the speech is that Whitney's reproduc- 
tion gives no adequate notion of the speech. The McLean 
County Historical Society on May 29, 1900, commemorated 
the anniversary of the convention of 1856, and secured 
the attendance at its meeting of a large number of the 
surviving delegates. The matter of the "lost speech" was, 
of course, canvassed among the survivors, and the con- 
clusion of the society, after full investigation, is thus stated 
in the published report of the meeting: "Lately there 
has been published a 'lost speech' made up from alleged 
notes. The McLean County Historical Society does not 
think it proper to send out a report of this reunion with- 
out stating that in this community, where many now living 
heard the great speech, and where Mr. Lincoln was so well 
known and loved, all of his friends consider the speech 

59 



still lost. The society had hoped to recover from the 
memory of the still living hearers some portions of that 
speech, but found their efforts in vain." 

The direct testimony fully sustains this conclusion. 
The late John M. Scott, ex-judge of the Illinois Supreme 
Court, who heard the speech of 1856 and often graphic- 
ally described its effect, once told the writer of this that 
Whitney's version was no more Lincoln's speech than it 
was his own. The late Gen. John M. Palmer, who pre- 
sided at the convention of 1856 and lived to attend the 
reunion of last year, said the Whitney version was "more 
Whitney's than Lincoln's." Gen. Thomas J. Henderson, 
of Princeton, 111., made a speech at the reunion, in which 
he said: "I am forced to say that I rather regret the 
publication, for I do not think it does justice to the speech 
that Mr. Lincoln delivered. In fact, I am strongly im- 
pressed with the belief that no report could have been 
made or published then or since." To the same effect is 
the testimony of Hon. Isaac L. Morrison, of Jacksonville, 
111. (lately deceased), George Schneider, of Chicago, Ben- 
jamin F. Shaw, of Dixon, 111., Gen. James M. Buggies, of 
Havana 111. (now also deceased), and ex-Judge Owen T. 
Beeves, of Bloomington, 111. All these men heard the "lost 
speech."' 

Second — The internal evidence of the speech itself. 
Lincoln's utterance is agreed upon all hands to have pro- 
duced a tremendous effect upon his auditors. All agree 
that his stirring words put the convention into a perfect 
frenzy of enthusiasm. One now reading the Whitney ver- 
sion with the theory that it is genuine would certainly 
wonder what all the excitement was about and why men 
embraced each other and wept when Mr. Lincoln sat down. 
The Whitney speech, in style, matter and manner, is no 
more Lincoln's than sweet currant wine is champagne. 

Third — But there is other evidence that would be con- 
clusive if it stood alone. Four or five years before the 

60 



"lost speech" was published in McClures Magazine this 
same Whitney issued a book entitled "Life on the Circuit 
with Lincoln,"' the principal purpose of which seems to 
have been to exploit a remarkable intimacy — a sort of 
Damon and Pythias relationship — between Mr. Lincoln 
and Mr. Whitney, which no one of the old Illinois friends 
of Lincoln ever heard tell of. On nearly every page of his 
book Mr. Whitney relates what "Lincoln and I" did. He 
is careful to make himself out a much better lawyer than 
Lincoln, and the unsophisticated might gather from his 
book that Lincoln, throughout the anti-slavery struggle 
in Illinois, absolutely leaned for support upon Mr. Whit- 
ney. Now, the point I would make about Whitney's book 
is, that in it he reproduces another alleged speech, ver- 
batim, which he says Lincoln delivered at the court house 
in Urbana, 111., on October 24, 1854, — just eight days after 
Lincoln had agreed with Senator Douglas, at Peoria, that 
they should both go home and make no more speeches in 
that campaign. It was known that Douglas violated this 
compact, but Mr. Whitney is perhaps the only authority 
for the fact that Lincoln did the like. Whitney says the 
Urbana speech was "made without preparation," that it 
was delivered in the court room by the light of a few can- 
dles; nor does he claim that Lincoln wrote it out or that 
any stenographer took it down, yet he reproduces the Ur- 
bana speech in his book under quotation marks, even to the 
interruptions of the auditors and Lincoln's replies to them. 
He calls the Urbana speech "the first independent, un- 
trammeled speech he (Lincoln) ever made on the slavery 
question." In subsequent pages of his book he refers to 
Lincoln's "great speech at Urbana," but says little about 
the truly great speech delivered by Lincoln eight days 
before at Peoria, which latter speech Lincoln took the 
trouble to write out in full after its delivery and publish 
in the Springfield Journal. Perhaps Whitney thought the 
Urbana speech was greatest of all because he wrote it 

61 



himself, for the internal evidence supplied by the speech 
itself is most conclusive that Lincoln neither wrote it nor 
uttered it as a whole. Some paragraphs of the Peoria 
speech arc used here and there, and many phrases and 
sentences gathered from Lincoln's later speeches abound 
throughout the alleged reproduction; but wherever the 
speech departs from the phraseology known from other 
evidence to be that of Lincoln it drops into the very dish- 
water of sheer mediocrity. 

It will thus be seen that Mr. Whitney had tried his 
hand at reproducing lost Lincoln speeches before he de- 
ceived the managers of McGlure's Magazine; and the ques- 
tion comes irresistibly, Why was it, if Mr. Whitney were 
going to reproduce a lost Lincoln speech in his book, and 
had then in his hands the materials which would have en- 
abled him to reproduce the great Bloomington speech, 
that he did not reproduce the latter speech, which every- 
body had been talking about and regretting the loss of 
for a half century, rather than this alleged Urbana speech, 
which nobody had ever heard of? He did not forget the 
Bloomington speech when writing his book, for he says of 
it (p. 76) : "I never in my whole life, up to this day, 
heard a speech so thrilling as this one from Lincoln. I 
have since talked with many who were present, and all 
substantially agree in enthusiastic remembrance of it." 
Yet the speech certainly did not "thrill" Mr. Whitney, for 
he would now have us believe he coolly took down the sub- 
stance of the speech, and even much of its language ! It 
is high time this bald literary fraud had been given its 
quietus. 



62 




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